


The Roommate Chronicles of Hego Damask and Wat Tambor

by PiermanWalter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Darth Plagueis - James Luceno
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Assassination Attempt(s), Blood and Gore, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Medical Procedures, Minor Character Death, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 19:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18999139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PiermanWalter/pseuds/PiermanWalter
Summary: Your terrible roommate who doesn't pay rent and basically extorts you to let him live in your house leaves for five years, and then comes back with a kid. I was morally obligated to write this.





	The Roommate Chronicles of Hego Damask and Wat Tambor

**Author's Note:**

> Last year I noticed my grades were falling and issued myself an ultimatum that for every percent I get under 80 in each class, I had to write one thousand words of fanfiction as suggested by random people on Tumblr. "The roommate chronicles of Wat Tambor and Hego Damask" was suggested, and one year later I finally post this monstrosity.

Dismissing some cringing social climber with a bored wave, Hego Damask made his way to the open bar for a drink. This was the greatest benefit of being a member of the secret Order of the Canted circle. Moonglow brandy? His medical droid, 11-4D quickly scanned the bottle before informing him it was as safe as liquor could get. Damask briefly pondered the numerous dangerous compounds contained in the toxic Moonglow fruit that had to be neutralised before safe consumption, then diluted half a glass in mineral water to be safe. His two Sun Guard attendants stood nearby, backs to the wall, carefully surveying the crowd. The Canted Circle would boast of its many prestigious members and the world-changing negotiations between its walls, if it weren't so secret. At Damask's level, the organisation had little more to offer and his continued presence was more or less a formality. A long farce of a slog through the induction ceremonies of new members. Aside from the usual backdoor dealings and scandals unfolding, he couldn't hear anything worth focusing on. Why network when you can just sit and drink? The uneven floor of the Canted Circle tower made him feel less sober than usual. Internally, Plagueis found himself disdaining every last one of them. The galaxy was suffused with the Force, but none of these people could sense it. It made sense for plebeians such as these to invent their own secrets just to feel special. 

As Hego reached across the bar for another glass of Moonglow brandy and soda, a security droid flew over him, smashing into the display shelves, which immediately collapsed on top of it, breaking every single bottle. 

Maladians. Belonging to a secret order, these dedicated assassins clad head to toe in black armor were difficult for even a full-fledged Sith Lord to contend with. Judging by the complete lack of prior warning, the Maladians must have completely overwhelmed security and taken over the entire building before breaking into the tower. A Neimoidian tried to negotiate with them, but was stabbed through the eye. As the society members stood still in horror, the assassins quickly fanned out around the circumference of the room, carefully avoiding the growing puddle of liquor from the demolished bar.An elderly Twilek lady was in hysterics, quickly drawing the attention of the assassins. A young Miraluka man stoically held a puncture gut wound shut while staggering to a secret door, which was immediately kicked open by more Maladians. A Wookie bodyguard made the mistake of carrying a slugthrower and was killed while reloading after firing only ten shots. The crowd was cut down from the outside in, the survivors clustering in the center of the room. As Hego didn't recognise anyone still alive, he made no effort to protect them.

The Sun Guards immediately moved in front of Damask, smashing their pikes together into both sides of an oncoming assassin's head with an awful crunch before kicking his body aside. One Guard made threatening moves with the pike, but another assassin stepped out of the crowd and ensnared it with a magnetic whip. The pike was pulled from her hand. Without missing a beat, the Sun Guard pulled a vibrodagger from her boot and hurled it straight into the whip-wielding assassin's chest. During this commotion, the other Sun Guard picked up a blaster from the ground and started firing at the assassins streaming through the open doors. 11-4D hid inside a large vase. At least some people knew how to behave properly in these situations.

Pulling another dagger from her other boot, the Sun Guard charged straight into the crowd of assassins, but Sun Guard had lost too many of her weapons and was quickly overwhelmed, falling to the ground in three smoking pieces. The other Sun Guard was able to deflect an incoming thermal detonator into the oncoming assassins, taking out a decent chunk of them, before a sniper shot him in the neck. With no more guards, a squad of Maladians approached Plagueis, a bit too close for comfort.

Pushing an enormous iron statue over with the Force brought Plagueis a few precious seconds to break the nearest Maladian's neck, but the others leapt out of the way and none were harmed. Or so they thought. The sparks of the statue set the puddle of volatile alien intoxicants on fire. The resulting explosion shook the entire room, assassins and victims alike tossed towards the high side of the room.

His droid, thrown across the room by the blast, was one of the few to get back up. The tilted floor made rainbow streams of blood run in patterns down one side to the other. There were still so many assassins that even with the Force in his grasp, it couldn't help him escape all of the metal discs in the air. His lower jaw was torn clean off and Plagueis slumped against the wall in shock. Luckily, he bled so much that the assassins assumed he was already dead. Their mistake. He shot towards the closest assassin and crushed his skull in one hand. No overpriced mercenary was going to get the best of him. After he made sure every last one was dead. Plagueis let himself slip into unconsciousness. But even in this pitiful state, there are still things that must be done. No rest for the wicked. Larsh Hill, an important figure in the Banking Clan, one of his best business connections, was killed during the massacre, but his son, San Hill, who hadn't attended the secret meeting, was still alive.

By concentrating on the Dark Side and turning his pain and frustration into sources of power, Plagueis was able to recover from surgery and leave the hospital within seven hours. Pushing past the terrified Givin nurses, Plagueis grabbed the first sealed bag of clean clothing and put it on as fast as possible, barely registering that the robes weren't his and most likely belonged to another Muun that died in the attack. As he left, he skimmed over his own medical dossier on a stolen datapad. Life threatening blood loss. Acidosis from cardiac overactivity of all hearts. Traumatic removal of lower jaw, tongue, upper trachea. Cybernetic breath mask and vocubabulator implant. Removal of several teeth and esophagheal resection to make room for the implant. Huh? Plagueis reached up and touched his face only to feel cold metal. The painkillers must have been strong if he hadn't noticed until now. By the time he made it out of the intensive care unit, the staff had already sounded an alarm over the intercom that a patient had escaped.

Adjusting the mask in the reflection of the sliding glass door, Plagueis strode calmly into the outpatient suite, sitting down on a couch to look through his pockets, waiting for a human girl with clumsy new cybernetic legs to be loaded into a landspeeder by her doting family. No need to rush here and gain any unnecessary attention. With enough confidence, most beings wouldn't expect anything was wrong. After the humans' landspeeder left, Plagueis tried to call a taxi, but all that he spoke were random phonemes at random volumes. Damn. A nearby Selkath shot him a dirty look while he composed himself well enough to calibrate the voice controls. Eventually, he was able to catch a taxi. This one was driven by a droid. Good. An organic would probably ask questions.

He was dropped off quite a distance away from the Hill estate. Judging by the lack of security guards coming to greet him, the function of the household must already be in disarray. Plagueis was allowed to make it all the way to the main gate uncontested. Luckily for him, repeated invitations to the residence meant that he was already in the building's security database. An ornate eye of a gatekeeper droid extended out from the wall, stared ominously at him for a few seconds, then flailed wildly, spewing droidspeak and flashing red lights in all directions. Damn. The mask. "Facial recognition failed. Would you like to verify your identity via voice recognition?" Of course. A few wires twisted with the Force solved that problem quite nicely. Three layers of duraplast slid upwards and Damask made his way up the stairs that led out of the ornate foyer and into the floor where the family actually lived. He could sense San Hill's presence before seeing him. Good thing he decided to stay home. He knew for a fact that the young Muun already had multiple checking accounts and investment portfolios. If he wanted to, he could become entirely independent. It was convenient that he associated his home with good memories, because if he didn't, he would have left immediately and be a real pain to track down. If Hego were in the same situation, and his father had died a horrible gruesome death, the first thing he'd do is raid the liquor cabinet, then go blasting off to Zeltros.

"Hego? How did you get here so fast?" The boy was sitting at a long table alone, flicking stone marbles round and round a carved wooden bowl. "San. I hope you don't mind me intruding, but this situation is serious. I must-" "I heard. You don't need to short circuit trying to tell me." How remarkably rude. Still, it's not as though he could blame him for feeling this way. "I'm not sure how much knowledge you have of the events that occurred during the Canted Circle meeting, but I am certain you are not safe here. The Maladians are known for being dangerously meticulous. It would be within our best interest to leave immediately, I think." San stared straight at him, but otherwise didn't react.

"You don't want the assassins to come back to finish the job, do you?"

Hill allowed himself to be picked up by the arm and led out of the room, eyes focusing on nothing in particular. At least he wasn't making a fuss. When he thought nobody was looking, he emptied the bowl of marbles into his pocket. By now, the surgical painkillers were starting to wear off and there was no way he'd let Hill drive, so for the second time in one day, he called a taxi back to his own ship garage. To his great surprise, 11-4D was already on the starship. 11-4D had somehow managed to survive the assassination, get itself repaired and make it's way back home. Plagueis noted that its legs were of a different color than before, and had preemptively prepared a suitcase full of robes and other necessities. The droid was not prescient enough to pack for Hill but that could be dealt with later. It was pointless to worry about what they carried, where they went, and who they met if they never made it off the planet. 

Leaving Coruscant, Plagueis flew the ship to one of the system's exoplanets and set it to idly orbit. While San pondered his terrible new fate, Plagueis examined the communicator he found in someone else's robes. It was a more recent model, with all of the new cybersecurity measures put in place since the huge data leak scandal a few years back. He was accustomed to slicing open the older models, so this communicator was proving a real challenge. Incredibly time consuming and monotonous work, but it left his mind free to ponder more important things. He couldn't access the holonet or message anyone without it, not unless he asked San for his communicator. It would be crass to directly ask him, but it would probably easier to ingratiate himself with him than to break through a brand new security systems made by an entire cryptography team.

"You aren't being particularly talkative. What kind of adolescent are you?" Out of spite, San raised his head and said, "You talk too much for someone who got their face sliced off, old man." After suppressing the urge to crush his impudent skull into paste, Plagueis wisely decided to spend the rest of the trip in silence.

It might have been easier to deal with Hill if he had reacted violently. At least, then he would have an excuse to knock him unconscious. This was probably the reason why the Jedi specifically inducted younglings into the Temple. Plagueis briefly imagined the Jedi dragging obstinate teenagers into their fold and the potentially galaxy-annihilating disaster that could result.

The obvious solution would be to get the kid into a situation where Hego Damask would be the sole person he could rely on, where everyone else is incompetent, untrustworthy, and frightening enough to make himself seem perfect by comparison. When Plagueis was young, his master used to drag him into crime-ridden cantinas and nightclubs, but those are no places for a future Chairman. Damask's own chances of climbing the corporate ladder was greatly hindered by the leaked photos of himself chugging an entire bottle of Corellian brandy, and he had to get rid of his siblings to ensure he still had the top job at his father's company. Considering San had no surviving close relatives, he didn't have to worry about that type of inconvenience.

A better idea would be to let him start working immediately. Struggling like a low-caste intern ought to take his ego down a few notches, and it's never a bad idea to get an early foothold in a corporate culture where seniority is everything. But that would require leaving him out of supervision for far too long. Not an option. There were many friends and associates of the Hill family who could be considered closer and more trustworthy than himself, but this was obviously unacceptable.

By the time Plagueis cracked the lock program and had a few laughs at the previous user's terrible poetry, San had fallen asleep. Now, who to contact? There were several important figures that owed Hego Damask a great debt. What about Nute Gunray? That man oozed flattery like an overripe jogan fruit oozed syrup. The exact sort of person who feel like he was the center of the galaxy, then pick him clean of everything he had. Not good for trying to keep a teenage ego in check. Wat Tambor, perhaps?

Out of legions of interchangeable Skakoan engineers, Tambor stood out from the crowd in the most distasteful way possible. Most politicians would cave to blackmail and manipulation under the pressure of networking and self advancement, but Wat Tambor gave off the air that he didn't even pretend to care about anyone, including himself. It was only through the connections of Hego Damask that such an unlikable creature was able to gain so much influence within the Senate. Could Tambor even function in political society without his help?  
Plagueis recalled when he last lived on Tambor's estate. A rather nice Ma'ood Revival style mansion, unfortunately disfigured by all the practical but ugly room additions Tambor made, alongside ornate limestone moldings pitted with flack from the nearby weapon testing grounds. As a civilized being, it was a strange and disconcerting place to live, but as a scientist, he had to appreciate the top of the line lab equipment, until he had to leave to focus his attentions on Coruscant.

With a schadenfreude-filled snicker, Plagueis remembered exactly why he stopped associating with him. Tambor came to a meeting to discuss funding for his project dressed in grease-soaked denim and went on a tangent about almandine crystal structures in three languages for ten minutes until one of the board members threatened to can the entire project, so he ripped an entire gas canister out of his pressure suit and threatened to detonate it, then continued talking about crystals for three hours. Something about doping laser boules with exotic metals. The project budget was approved because the board was scared for their lives, but by the time they tried to sue him for technically holding them hostage, he had become too rich off the project that they approved to pin down. What a disaster. As if any investor would even consider backing a client who closes deals by threatening murder suicide. A move like that had the potential of permanently wrecking a career. 

A quick trip around the holonet confirmed that Tambor had neither physically nor metaphorically self-destructed and was in fact doing pretty well for himself. No insane gaffes, no ridiculous controversies. Even some of the investors he threatened to blow up were jockeying to get on his good side. Somehow, the news hadn't managed to get ahold of that story. It seemed that this loose cannon had, against all expectations, managed to anchor himself down and start aiming. This could either mean he stopped doing strange and terrible things, or simply got better at covering his tracks. The exact sort of person to put San on constant edge and make Damask himself seem much more trustworthy by comparison. And it would be a waste not to introduce the future Foreman of the Techno Union and Chairman of the IGBC. 

As displeased Tambor would be if he called, it would be so much worse if they showed up unannounced. And with the quality of conversation offered by Hill, there was nothing else to do anyway. Surprisingly, he picked up in seconds, looking much the same as he did years before. "Magister Hego Damask. When I saw the call signature coming from the latest SoroSuub communicator, I assumed it was not from you. I blocked your previous device." Ouch. Was he deliberately being this crushingly honest? Normally Damask would be offended, but he knew from experience that Tambor treated everyone like this. "My old friend! It's been far too long. I was just-" "Dispense with the politeness. What do you want from me?" 

"To make things brief, a friend of mine has died in a terrible attack and left me his adolescent son to care for. See? Here he is." Damask turned the holoprojector so it could pick up San laying passed out on a passenger seat. "I'm afraid he's quite broken up about it. We need a safe place to stay while I sort out his affairs. I trust your estate is in working order?"

"I was hoping you would never return and managed my estate accordingly. A majority of the grounds are not fit for humanoid habitation. I recommend you find somewhere else to live, unless you wish to be confined to a single kitchen and storage closet I never use." Hego briefly imagined the entire estate stuffed from floor to ceiling in garbage and corpses before replying, "My mistake then. I really am sorry for imposing. I'll have to find somewhere else to live. What a shame that I expected you to be a decent homeowner." How much veiled condescension would it take to goad him into perceiving this as a challenge? Not much, apparently. "You are wrong. I shall depressurize some rooms and debride the metal vapor deposits off the walls so you and your guest will not die." Then he hung up. What exactly did Tambor manage to do to the house these last few years? Was the building still livable? Plagueis set course to Hypori, deeming it extremely unlikely that this would be a long term living arrangement. Worst comes to worst, at least he was already wearing a breathing mask.

His communicator blipped, shaking Plagueis out of this train of thought. It was Wat, and the purely audio message said, "Even through a low-fidelity hologram I can tell that your respiration device is not properly calibrated." The words stopped while his suit repressurised, emitting a long and strange tone. Was he doing this to scare him? "I know this from experience. If you wish to survive the entire trip to Hypori, you should fix it as soon as possible."

11-4D's medical sensors picked up on his low blood sugar and immediately began mixing up an optimal IV solution. As the droid disinfected his wrist, Plagueis was struck by the thought that he would never eat or drink normally for the rest of his life. He had the droid check his breathing mask just in case, and wouldn't you know. Tambor was right. The gas mix was badly measured to begin with and had been slowly ticking towards toxic levels for so long that it was a miracle he was still conscious. The droid fretted and complained, but Damask wasn't going to be lectured twice on how to breathe without dying, you imbecile, in a single day, so he ordered it to shut down until an hour before they were scheduled to leave hyperspace.

While the IV fluid percolated its way into his veins, Plagueis stared into his onboard minibar. As delicious the flavorings and fusel compounds were, Plagueis doubted they could be injected straight into his bloodstream without causing serious issues, so he wistfully closed the bar doors and spent the rest of the trip encrypting several holomodules hidden in the metadata of a few innocuous images, containing all relevant details of everything that happened, then sending them to his apprentice. Knowing Palpatine, he would have reacted to his master's sudden disappearance with extreme suspicion. By now, he probably knew about the Canted Circle massacre and found the hospital records of his escape, but Plagueis doubted he could keep track of him once he had left Coruscant. San woke up three times in the entire week long flight to chug six cans of energy drinks each time then immediately go back to sleep. Damask wasn't going to judge. He even managed to sleep through atmospheric reentry. The massive landing block, big enough for a cargo freighter, was completely abandoned except for some finely polished and heavily modified pit droids. 11-4D took the opportunity to say, "Such good workers. And so well maintained! A good sign, don't you think, Master?" "Go wake San up."

When it was first discovered, the planet Hypori had absolutely no native life, not even bacteria. Through sheer cosmic coincidence, the atmosphere could support alien life. The entire planet was a flat expanse of dust, everywhere so similar to everywhere else that the first explorers went mad. Out of the ground rose Tambor's estate, seemingly lifeless, but even more out of place in the vast empty wastes. "This place sure has changed since I was here last. He really did build those extensions he said he would. What do you suppose they are for? It can't all be storage." San didn't reply.

The asphalt path leading from the landing block to the main building was so uniform that if one looked straight down, one would question if the path didn't loop and they didn't in fact walk the same length of asphalt over and over. As for the mansion, it looked as if an entire starship hull was welded directly into the building. The main entrance, unmistakably ship cargo bay doors, slid open to reveal an incongruously normal-looking foyer. Upon closer inspection, the main entrance to the living room was bricked shut. Instead, the opposite wall was knocked down, leading straight from the foyer into a back hall. Horrific screeching schranz music and metallic smashing could be heard from a room down the hall, but it was hard to distinguish between them. Just as Hego remembered. He took a minute to raise the volume of his vocabulator and yelled through the door, "There you are! I've been looking all over for you."

As the door slid open, the smashing stopped and the music rose to deafening volumes. An imposing figure strode out of a cloud of oily blue smoke, dragging a monster droid by the leg. Tossing the droid into a massive bin of broken parts, he turned to face them, expression on his masked face completely unreadable. "There are so many favors you owe me after all. This is San. I assume you have never met before. I suppose he can live here until his inheritance gets sorted out?"

Suddenly the droid in the bin lurched forward with a crunch as it hit the floor and shattered a few celadon tiles. Tambor whipped out a derringer blaster and repeatedly shot it in the head until it exploded and caught on fire. A frankly adorable little drone flew out of an open vent in the ceiling, sprayed the entire bin with foam, then landed on Tambor's head. Then he nodded and closed the door behind him, bringing the music volume back down to tolerable levels. 

Deciding to leave as quickly as possible, Damask made his way down the hall, the music slowly fading behind them. These events were exciting enough to wake San up from his miserable stupor. For the first time in hours, he said something. "I can't believe you would let someone like that live on your estate." The hall opened up to an empty vaulted rotunda, light making moving patterns along the walls and floor from the stained glass windows put on motorised rollers, turning to let out occasional bursts of smoke escaping the network of pipes that crawled up the domed ceiling like a climbing plant.  "Treat our esteemed host Wat Tambor with more respect. We are his guests. This entire compound and surrounding grounds belong to him." 

"So this entire place is his? I read about Wat Tambor on the Holonet. There's a conspiracy theory that he's actually more than one person because no other Skakoan goes offworld for as long as he does." San briefly paused by a faux moonstone goddess statue holding a massive hot water tank. The stylised star she was meant to hold was on the other side of the courtyard, smashed into glittering pieces which were then carefully piled on top of one another. "If I had a mansion, I'd probably do something like this. This place weirds me out, but it's such a LOOK." San and the droid carefully sidestepped a perfectly circular hole in the ground. Damask was tall enough to step directly over it. While doing so, he looked down and saw that the hole continued through several more floors below.

"He didn't tell us where we're allowed to go." "It's obvious if you know what you are looking for. Have you noticed that some of the doors have been left open?" "What does that mean?" "I think it means there are some places he wants us to be and some places where we shouldn't be. Simple enough." "Yeah well if he isn't stopping us from going anywhere, that probably means we're allowed everywhere." Hill looked up and down the hallway, before setting his sights on the heaviest, most foreboding-looking door. Of course. "San! Don't-" The boy turned a massive valve in the middle of the door and a jet of noxious steam shot through the cracks, strong enough to push him backwards. Damask with his breathing mask couldn't smell a thing, but judging by San's reaction, he was better off this way. "Hego- I think *hack* I think that door is the only thing keeping us alive." "If you had allowed me to finish speaking-" "Yeah. *cough* Yeah. Let's not open doors anymore."

Plagueis suddenly realised it had been over a day since he last had a drink. Normally, he'd be having enormous headaches, but any pain was centered where his vocal chords used to be, and was mild enough to ignore. Maybe the surgical sedatives entertained his synapses enough that the lack of alcohol wasn't bothering him.

As they made their way up a staircase that had it's carved stone railing smashed off and replaced by metal bars, Damask said, "A few words of warning regarding Tambor. He can be incredibly volatile." "Yeah, because he's Skakoan. They'll decompress if you look at them too hard." "Not in that sense. He can be very unpredictable. It's impossible to read him so it's easy to assume he has no emotions. But he's extremely impulsive and vindictive without any real reason to be. Let's just say he had an entire week to prepare for us, and he did, well... this." Damask pointed to a section of plaster wall mouldings that looked as though they were set on fire and put out with acid. "Now, I'm not saying this to scare you, but be careful around him. Never talk to him unless you are with me."The staircase eventually led to a large, wood panelled room with a long table and several recently varnished chairs. At least he did something right. San immediately sat down and put his feet on the table. Long winding gashes and scrapes in the wooden floor meandered and eventually led towards the door, as if a series of heavy objects were haphazardly dragged out of the room. The only open door in the room was the one they entered from. Damask found himself warily looking up at a hatch in the ceiling in case Wat dropped down from it like a mynock from hell. Luckily for his sanity Tambor entered the room through the door like a normal decent sentient being, the same little drone following behind him with a tray of food balanced on top of it. When the drone smoothly deposited the tray onto the table, Damask could see it was mostly dried vegetables and unidentified reconstituted substance. 11-4D finally hauled the suitcase up the stairs. Tambor sidestepped to allow it into the room. "Only one of you is medically capable of eating so I see no purpose in making more food." "That's quite alright. I'll have my droid mix an IV solution for me. San, are you absolutely sure you can eat this?"

"No, this is great. I haven't eaten in a week." As Hill was about to take his first bite, Tambor suddenly backhanded the whole tray so hard it flew off the table and splattered all over the opposite wall. While Hill stared at him in silent terror, he asked, "Are Muuns capable of digesting large quantities of wax esters and mycotoxins?" Hill was too shocked to answer in a timely manner, so Hego spoke up. "No, we can't." "Just in time, then. I shall see if I have anything edible for your kind. I recall being given product samples from a Techno Union subsidiary. I would not recommend eating them more than once a month given their level of lead contamination, yet many food products deemed edible for Muuns on the market contain much higher concentrations. You shall have to make the judgement for yourself."

While San sat stock still in confusion and Damask osmosed, 11-4D decided to break the silence. "Regardless of your opinions, I think Tambor is a great man." Damask pulled his IV lines uncomfortably far so he could glare straight at it. "Droid, if you say that again, I'll have you reset to factory state." As Tambor left the room, San leaned out of his chair to see him turn the corner and asked, "Sir? What do you eat?" Tambor was out of sight when he replied, "I do not." When he left, three pit droids fell out of the hatch on the ceiling to clean up the mess before leaving the main door.

A few minutes later, the little drone returned alone with another tray of food. "Dentaspice Supersprout Surprise? Man. I hope that's not the only food in the entire estate. I don't think he'll let us starve to death -oh kriff." San leaned too far forward and the stone marbles in his pocket spilled across the floor, getting stuck in the deep and mysterious gouges in the hardwood floorboards before they could roll away. As 11-4D carefully disinfected the IV injection site on his arm, Damask said, "I'm glad I warned you about him in advance. Tambor is just as bad as I remember. Hasn't improved at all."

"He's really weird but I don't mind. You seem to pay more attention to everything when he's around."

"Because if I didn't keep an eye on him, I'm fairly certain he would get us all killed."

"You should give him more credit than that. It's not like he wants everyone dead. I think. You said he was way better off than he was when you were here last, right? You did say he owned this house, right? And you lived here when I was barely three decades old, right? That means he owned this house for at least twenty years. Which means he bought it before they announced the new biosphere dome project that made hinterland estates like these crash like mad in property value. Which means-"

"You've said enough, San. Make your point."

"I'm just saying that a guy who can tank a eighty-ish million credit loss like nothing ought to be treated better than that."

Damn. The kid was right. As impressive as Hill's deductive skills and real estate savvy was, Plagueis had to determine what level of threat he now posed. For the leaders of a future galaxy-spanning war, these two were fine choices, but both of them were getting a bit too sharp for his liking. Plagueis briefly entertained the idea of how powerful and cunning they would be as Sith before deciding that something must be done to stop them from plotting against him. By the time they finished eating, someone had unlocked the other doors in the hall, revealing several washrooms, a pristine kitchen, a mysterious room covered floor to ceiling in electrical outlets, and one bedroom with four reasonable beds, with folded sheets, blankets, and pillows piled in the center of the room? Exactly how many people was Tambor expecting?

 As the droid headed to the outlet room to recharge (So THAT'S what the room was for.) and the two of them got ready for bed, Damask asked "Well, San. What do you think of him as a person?" "I think the water tank on top of the goddess statue is flash as all hell." "Not as a businessman or an interior decorator. What are your intuitive impressions of him?"

"He says a lot of things that most people would just imagine saying three hours after the actual conversation. It's kind of hard to tell if he hates me or not." Well, that hit the nail on the head. "Also I don't think it's possible for him to unintentionally be this weird. I think he's doing this on purpose because he actually hates you. What happened the last time you lived here?"

It was lucky that his vocabulator was so flat and emotionless by default that Hego didn't even need to act. "Nothing much, really. I believe he's just a private person by nature. Skakoans are an antisocial species, after all. Go to sleep and let me worry about him." San didn't need to know about the myriad experiments he had made without permission, the myriad experiments which did not belong to him that he had accidentally destroyed, nor the myriad experiments that broke free of his control and rampaged across Tambor's estate. Not to mention all of the combat droids he requested, then had his apprentice obliterate. And all of the strangers he invited over to secretly train as Sun Guards, who stayed for weeks before leaving with inexplicable injuries. Damn. As Plagueis thought, San stood up and left the room. Plagueis let him, since all other doors in the corridor were locked.

The chance of completely losing control of the situation and the both of them, scratch that: three of them including the droid, becoming suspicious and all plotting against him together increased the more he thought about it. Perhaps he was overreacting. Becoming used to Sith traditions and interactions made him naturally suspicious of all interactions, but there was definitely something else afoot. Maybe coming back to Tambor's estate was not the best idea. Plagueis' musings were cut short by San charging back into the room, the first smile he had ever since they met lighting up his face. "The master bathtub is HUGE! It's made out of a giant hollowed out hematite blob and when I saw it I thought it was an entire Hutt! Come on, you have to look!" "San. I just told you to go to sleep. Exactly what part of this entails charging into random rooms just as I warned you against?"

"No! The master bathroom is my bedroom! They never attached any water pipes to it, so Tambor says I get to sleep in it!" Plagueis was too tired to formulate a response to this. Leave it to an adolescent to be overjoyed at the prospect of sleeping in a bathtub. Wait- Tambor told him? How did they already manage to communicate without his notice? Was San lying to him under the flagrantly stupid assumption that Hego wouldn't confront Wat about it, or at the very least, mentioning it in passing to see how he reacts? Did they manage to share comm numbers while he wasn't looking? Or was San just lying to have an excuse to explore the estate? Stop overthinking. Plagueis really needed to get some sleep before his paranoia completely overtook him, and besides, he already had a plan to get things back under control. 

Invite Palpatine. Tambor, if he remembered properly, was not nearly as suspicious of his apprentice, since he was involved with very few of the experiments done on the estate and as far as he knew, had no direct affiliations with anyone here. Besides, how much worse could it possibly get?


End file.
